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Ruby - GUI - Desktop Programming - Tools required

I dabbled in Ruby quite a while ago but only at the console level. I didn't take it any further at the time. I'm now considering treating it more seriously this time, though I'd have to start from the start.

My understanding is that Ruby is a cross-platform development language. What I'm wanting to do is develop desktop GUI applications using Ruby. My primary operating system is Windows Vista. Applications will be database front ends and in that regard I'm comfortable with MySql.

I'm also having a hard time getting my head around the fact that Java is used to run Ruby programs. I always thought, at the low level, they were competing programs; maybe they are and nobody cares.

Ruby doesn't need Java. It will run quite happily without it.

JRuby is a specially implementation of Ruby that allows Ruby to interact with Java. It is there for those who want to use Java objects in their Ruby code or want to use Ruby in their Java environment.

There are a lot more useful bits of Java code out there than Ruby code because Java has been out there for so much longer than Ruby and consequently has a much larger user base. JRuby allows you to take advantage of that huge Java code base and still have the splendid Ruby experience.

Java isn't required for ruby. It (or at least the java VM) *is* required for jruby. Jrubby is a straight-up port of the ruby interpreter to run on top of the JVM.

Java can get confusing. There's java, the language, and java, the platform. Java, the language, is not at all required for ruby. Java, the platform, can run jruby, the language, and gives jruby, the language, access to java libraries.

Java isn't required for ruby. It (or at least the java VM) *is* required for jruby. Jrubby is a straight-up port of the ruby interpreter to run on top of the JVM.

Java can get confusing. There's java, the language, and java, the platform. Java, the language, is not at all required for ruby. Java, the platform, can run jruby, the language, and gives jruby, the language, access to java libraries.

So to clarify, simply, JVM can be considered at the same level as the operating systems, Windows, Linux & Mac. So for all intents and purposes, when downloading Ruby, it's a matter of choosing which version you require, Windows, Linux, Mac or JVM. So most would have a choice between two being JVM and at least one of the others (Windows, Linux or Mac).

Thanks, a good reference point. I've bookmarked the page and that page links to a couple of other Ruby programming books.

In relation to this book, the only downside is that it's Linux & Mac based, no reference to Windows and that apparently it's referring to qt3 when qt4.4 is out. Having said this I'm sure I could work through it.

Since posting this question I've since purchased a book and downloaded a free pdf book, titles and links haven't got at hand at the moment, will post later with the details.